At Last We Meet
by QueXseraXsera
Summary: Told in a series of vignettes. Hermione and Malfoy settle into their respective places in the wizarding world which clashes with the connection from a string of previous encounters in the muggle world.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** I know, I know I'm writing too many stories at once, but I have a good excuse! This story was created mainly because my friend complained about me not writing enough Harry Potter fanfiction. Also I really just wanted to mess around with the idea of Hermione meeting Draco briefly before they were officially introduced. Basically he comes in the compartment after Hermione introduces herself, but before Harry and Ron continue their introductions. In case you didn't read the summary: this is a vignette story and each chapter will represent a specific moment in time. Sounds like fun, right?

Song for this chapter: "Miles's Story" from the Tuck Everlasting soundtrack (it's instrumental and magical, perfect for this chapter)

**Chapter 1: First Encounter**

It was strange because before he introduced himself Hermione knew him. Draco Malfoy. His pointed pale face and slicked back blonde hair were hard to forget. He does not register his own knowledge, even as surprise blooms across Hermione's face, just stands and deals with Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, and that red-haired boy. Later they would morph into Harry and Ron, her two best friends, and she won't be to remember when they were anything else. But just then they were only their appearances.

Hermione is still shocked at seeing Malfoy again…there in the same compartment, headed for the same school. For so long she has been used to seeing him in the company of a different backdrop and it is hard to picture him anywhere else. However her stomach drops a little at his feigned ignorance. This sort of thing has happened before and she has lost friends because of it. Eventually those friends pretended their way into honestly forgetting her. She does not want Malfoy to do the same. For though she may not be important enough for him to remember, she cannot forget their first meeting, as insignificant as it seems. The conversation was long and their words twisted into grand shapes of ideas the longer they spoke with one another. What is stranger is that the conversation took place in the muggle world, on a street near her house. Hermione, being herself, looked up his name on a lark as soon as she got her letter in one of her many, many books—this one on the genealogy of pure blood families. Curious, she finds that he, too, is a wizard, a member of one of the older wizarding families known for their connection to the Dark Arts.

"No," Harry Potter responds to Malfoy's offer, his words cutting into her thoughts. "I don't think I will thanks." Malfoy looks angry. He _does_ have a temper. But underneath…Underneath the swagger and the slicked back hair Hermione knows that Malfoy possesses a glimmer of a conscience. Why else would he sit down next to a girl crying on the street? Especially considering who he is and where he's from. Even now Hermione wonders why, on the day when she was crying after a particularly rough bout of teasing, she looked up to find grey eyes staring at her and a terse "Well out with it. Who's the idiot you're crying over?" Somehow this rude question prompted her to answer that it was not one single idiot but a whole group of them who tormented her for being different. And from there it progressed until she lay nearly her whole life story at his feet and he shared bits of his own experience. Through their words their personalities melded and similarities spun through their tales, illuminating their parallel lives. From then on he would turn up around the place they had met, on the street, one block over from her house, even one time in the library. They all appeared to be by chance, as unconnected and amazing as the first. How strange to encounter him again. Even stranger to know that in real life, where people are not separated from their responsibilities and histories, he's not nice at all. For all his halfway-kind, meaningful thoughts spun into brilliant words, in the current setting, his arrogance, overshadows past fond conversations. In this world, one that seems to be more his than hers, he demands where he once requested, threatens where he once soothed, and insults where he once fell silent out of kindness. Now, seeing him in his element, she is disillusioned; he is everything she would have thought him to be. _But then...in the muggle world was his persona just an act?_ she wonders. Even on her own turf he was never wholly the nice guy; his kindness intercepted by his own sense of smug arrogance. In Hermione's eleven-year-old world, and from what she has read the wizarding world concurs with her paradigm, any sense of wrongness makes a person wholly bad. Regardless of any nice times they may have shared Hermione is not willing to be so openly overlooked; she is rankled by his choice of Harry over her, fame over the sincere-somewhat friendship that they shared. With all the self assurance born of one who has achieved a great amount of intelligence at a fairly young age; Hermione concludes that Malfoy is a great, ugly prat and she will have nothing to do with him. The red haired boy and Harry Potter draw their wands while the two thuggish boys behind Malfoy crack their knuckles.

"Fighting is extremely childish behavior, you know," she says in the commanding know-it-all tone that is as natural to her as breathing. "Be careful, you don't want to be expelled before you even reach the school!" But there is no fighting. The boys leave in the confusion of Scabbers pouncing and clumsy, ineffective wandwork. Hermione watches Malfoy as he leaves, embarrassed—though she knows he'll never admit to it—the self satisfied smirk banished from his face. This is a blow to his pride, but with an ego as large as his, he'll recover.

"Move out of my way, Granger," he huffs as she is still standing in the doorway of the compartment. She moves wordlessly aside as he leaves with a sour temper and his self-importance in tatters around him. Harry and Ron do not ask how he knows her name.


	2. Scraping the Surface

**A/N:** There's no song because this chapter took too long. Sorry about the inconsistences with the book. Even though I've read the 1st book at least 10 times, I haven't read it in a while. Just FYI-I'm not lazy I just left it at home and I'm away at college.

Chapter 2: Scraping the Surface

_What do you despise? By this you are truly known._

_-Michelangelo_

They should all be nervous. Though she has read about the sorting procedure in _Hogwarts: __A __History_ about a million times and has imagined the event even more than that, Hermione's stomach twists with nervousness and an aftertaste of excitement. Now it is official. It is not in the friendly typed writing of a book or locked away in her mind; the moment is _here_. And in front of all these _people,_too! The line seems to slip away person by person until…

"Granger, Hermione," Professor McGonagall's officious shout seems like the precursor to her execution. Hermione reluctantly steps forward and places the hat on her head.

"Ah, let's see…" a voice says seemingly out of thin air. "Where to put you?" Hermione realizes the hat on her head is talking to her and very politely, too. "You've got smarts that's true, but still an undeniable spot of courage. That decides it. GRYFFINDOR!" Hermione shakily takes the hat off and gets to her feet to join the crimson clad students at the Gryffindor table. Her eyes search for and land not on the two rude boys she met on the train, but on a blonde boy with a pointed chin. Malfoy. The line seems to inch along person after person. Vaguely she notes, the boy with the lost frog is sorted into her house. All others are irrelevant, as she searches for the boy who used to make her smile instead of frown. And then there he is, Draco Malfoy, stepping—no, it is more of a swagger, really—up to the Sorting hat stool. The glow from the candles illuminate the highlights in his platinum blonde hair giving it an angelic glow. The cold sense of sense importance in his eyes, however, is more satanic than seraphic. He takes the hat as if it were a hand-me-down of his, worthless but a part of his possessions nonetheless. Then, in the millisecond before the hat falls down the Malfoy looks up to the ceiling, eyes wide and lips tight with worry. Then it is gone before she can do a double take as the hat obscures a good deal of his face. Without taking the proper time to decide, without any sort of fairness, the hat cries "SLYTHERIN!" She blanches. In all her reading, she has learned a great deal about that house. It is the house that Malfoy, this new cruel Malfoy belongs to. But not the boy on the street whose gruff friendliness saved her when she thought nothing else would. Not even books. He runs to his friends, also of prominent wizarding families connected with the Dark Arts, she notes, and smirks with them. It is a smirk that she is beginning to become hatefully familiar with.

"That Draco Malfoy is a cute," says a girl whom Hermione vaguely registers to be Lavender Brown. "Even if he is a git."  
>"I don't know what you're talking about," said Hermione getting a little flustered. Friendly, maybe, but cute? That was beyond the limits of her active imagination. Lavendar shrugs and jabbers on but Hermione's eyes linger on the blond haired boy. Without warning, for the action causes a sharp jab of fear and something unnamable to jab Hermione's stomach, their eyes meet. Hermione stares him down, a reprimand. His original expression is a smirk, but even from across the room, she sees him look at her with remorse, an expression that seems to be an apology, one he cannot say aloud. But then he turns away before she can register whether it was a trick of the light, of her imagination or not. The rest of the meal passes and she struggles to take in all around her, it is so new so all encompassing. Everyone's chatter surrounds her like a warm blanket and though she feels like one drop of water in a vast sea, she is still included in all this magic and wonder. It feels good.<p>

And then when they toddle off to sleep, tired and sated from the heavy meal, Malfoy's eyes are the only ones who are searching, too. Their eyes find each other in the crowd. And then he goes left and she goes right to their respective houses. When she goes to sleep she wonders if he, too stayed awake wondering at the strangeness and separateness of it all.

It is night again, but this time Hermione is not sleeping. She is searching, searching for one blond git carrying the name Malfoy. Only he could be foolish enough to ask Harry Potter for a duel. In the dark the hallways seem longer than they are and goosebumps prickle at Hermione's skin. Though they are mostly friendly, she does not want to run into any ghosts tonight. In hindsight Hermione will laugh at herself for this frightened walk in the inky blackness that shrouds the castle, but just now any terrifying possibility that prowls through her thoughts seems very real. Each step seems like it will alert a teacher to her presence out of bed, or worse Filch. But she has monitored their habits and knows that no one goes down this hallway at this specific time of night. _Thud_! The noise echoes through the hallway and seems to shatter all her confidence and reasonable thoughts. _Was __that __a __footstep?__Or __something __worse?_ She scampers off, thinks better of it than runs, not sure if she can discern another's footsteps in her own and then-

"It's only me," a voice says. It is only his voice that can stop her shaking. Even if he _is_ a pompous jerk.

"Be more careful," she hisses at him in a tone above a whisper. "I thought you were a teacher. Or Peeves!"

"But I'm not." He says and she knows he's smiling. He wasn't scared, not in the least. Or that's what he wants her to think.

"Why did you start this?" she wants to know, her words pouting down with annoyance.

"He's an idiot; it's fair game," says Malfoy, blithe and unconcerned.

"You'll lose our house points! You know he'll come after you. And then what? Do you even know how to duel?"  
>"I know more than him," says Malfoy in that same mask of arrogance and for a moment a pang of sadness goes through her when she realizes already he is the same as he was on the train. <em>Maybe, <em>she thinks _He__'__s __not __capable __of __true __feelings. __Not __in __this __world.__Not __now._ Just as suddenly as it came, the sadness at a loss of sameness, a wish for things to be the way they were, it dissipates into anger and annoyance. she wants to shake him, to yell at him, to shout 'Why won't you be the way you are? What is holding you back?' But he just looks at her with a face she can't fully see in the dim moonlight.

"You're being stupid," is what she finally comes up with, but it has lost most of it's heat. She is not really angry at him for this, and they both know it.

"I know, he says and with that slight tone of remorse, for he is sorry too, she can almost imagine that things haven't changed. That he is still really the same, he just needed to be prodded into himself. But then he continues. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going through with this."

"What happened to you, anyway to make you like this?" she says still whispering but wanting to shout. "What are you trying to prove? That you're better than Harry? Well both of you are idiots if you're going to go through with this."

"I don't need your approval," he says anger seeping into his tone, too. He turns away from her and she thinks he's going to leave. To walk away and never come back. But he stays. His posture is tense, ready for the attack on his character, but he remains there. With her.

"No you need common sense," she says without any real bite. His posture loses some of his tension and even in the dark, she can see one corner of his mouth pull up towards the ceiling in a half-smile. Or maybe another smirk, she can't tell in the lighting.

"I need all the help I can get according to you," he says and she knows he is smiling because of the upward tilt to his words. But he hasn't given her an answer yet.

"You need to apologize," she says and he knows that she is not referring to the duel.

"You were right," he says and hesitates as if he hopes that will be all. But her answering look presses him to finish. "I'm sorry."

"Why did you do it in the first place?" she asks even though she knows her tone comes out petulant, like a child's. But neither of them is really that grown-up.

"Things are different here," he says offering up an excuse when he cannot speak the truth. Hermione squints at him, but he continues. "You've seen that. I…Look, maybe it would be better if we just…pretended we didn't know each other. From before, I mean." Hermione's face scrunches up at this, part from anger and part from hurt. He closes his eyes and exhales.

"Go home," she says in a small voice. "You just…You are an idiot, you know that?"  
>"That came out wrong," he said. "When it's just us we don't have to pretend that it's just when other people are involved-"<p>

"You feel like you have to be a great arrogant prat!" Hermione said breaking out of her whispering. Malfoy shushed her. "If you have to do that when other people around, you are a coward." He tensed suddenly as if he felt the impact of her words as a slap.  
>"I've been called worse," he said in a low tone. "That's pretty much what I would expect coming from a Gryffindor."<p>

"I don't expect this, but not because you're a high and mighty Slytherin, it's because you're _you_."

"Oh isn't that nice, you accept the real me instead of my house title. But you know what? They're one in the same."

"Then I hope this is the last time we meet. I don't even want to know who you'll try to pretend to be next." They both turn away from each other, neither proud of what they said, but neither wanting to take it back. They start walking, both going back a different way but a couple paces off he turns back to her. He sees the way she holds herself, fists clenched and trying to stalk off quietly. She's trying to be brave about this. And he thinks just a little bit about how much it took for Hermione to come that night. She had to break the rules and stumble around in the dark just for the off chance that she would stop him. And maybe he thinks about how her face looked when he skipped over it with his eyes, how her curious expression collapsed in on itself, almost as sad as the day they met. He doesn't want to be yet another thing she has to run from.

"Tell Potter…tell him this whole duel thing is rubbish." She turns toward him, surprised at this, but he's already striding away, almost too fast to catch up with. She goes back to the portrait hole. Neville is there, asleep, because he can't guess the password to get back in (again) and the Fat Lady's gone visiting. She waits there in the dark for a bit, and somehow it is less scary before. The hidden depths of would-be monsters and ghosts waiting for her, morph into the complexities of her own thoughts. She almost gets to a point where the shadows don't unnerve her, but then Harry and Ron clamber through the portrait. And it's different because she remembers that it isn't only the Fat Lady's absence, that makes her stand here, lost in thought.

"Off to see Malfoy," she says trying to be casual. "I wouldn't bother. There are tons of teachers about and you might as well ask to get expelled or lose a bunch of house points in the first week!" This are arguments that would convince her, but Harry and Ron remain unaffected. They do not care about getting caught, only about settling scores, and it is this that makes her hesitate. This is what motivated Malfoy, this new Malfoy, to pose the offer in the first place. But she cannot stop the words from tumbling out anyway, because after all he didn't retract the duel for nothing.

"It's very silly, you know" she said as imperiously as she can. "He might not even show up. And then you've gone around in the dark for nothing." Harry and Ron are used to Hermione's imperiousness, and as they think her know-it-all cover is annoying rather than informative, this information barely registers. She goes with them, keeping them to the passageways she knows that there is no one patrolling. And when her words prove true, no one really wants to admit she was right in the first place. Besides, Harry acknowledged the same thought, why not call it his own? She lets them think it was because of cowardice, doesn't correct them when they insult him and his motives. This new Malfoy, after all, probably isn't above these things. He has a role to maintain, after all. And yet, with her skulking around hallways at night, Hermione realizes she does, too.


End file.
